The use of waste materials and by-products in highway construction

The recycling of waste has advanced considerably, motivated by a more or less general recognition of the resource value in high volume of formerly discarded materials, such as scrap tires, selected plastics, construction rubble, mining waste and combustion by-products; this actitude may be explained by the fact that highways normally require high volumes of construction materials, which are not always quality wise adequate, readily available and cheap. This paper gives a synthetic overview of waste use in highway construction an expands, with a more detailed description, on the use of recycled plastics (LDPE) and reclaimed rubber from scrap tires, both as low-cost modifiers in the production of high-performance bituminous binder.